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The economy grew at an anemic 1.5 percent rate last month, unemployment remains over 8 percent and some economists are now predicting a double-dip recession — but don’t worry. In Colorado, you can still buy a lap dance with your food-stamp card.

In California, you can head over the border to Las Vegas, and withdraw some gaming cash before hitting the slots.

A tenth of those getting public assistance in New Hampshire don’t even live in the state.

Is this a great country or what?

We know all this thanks to the magic of the EBT (Electronic Benefit Transfer) card, a government-issued debit card, designed to support recipients who can’t afford basic necessities, like food, shelter and clothing. Funded mostly by the feds, but administered by state and local jurisdictions, the EBT card has replaced the old food stamps, thus removing the “stigma” of paying for groceries with government coupons.

Tracing EBT transactions has also exposed fraud by bureaucrats whose job it is to supervise such transfer programs. In Indiana, a state employee faces charges she issued EBT cards to fictitious recipients, then took some $250,000 and blew it at a riverboat casino.

In Wisconsin, nine county workers were recently busted for running a fraud ring that stole nearly $300,000 from taxpayers.

Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy in March sacked some 27 bureaucrats for falsifying their financial information when they applied for emergency benefits after a tropical storm last summer. In all, some 1,053 Nutmeg State employees applied for benefits, double-dipping the taxpayers from the safety of their sinecures.

Welcome to the Dependency Society, where citizens and public servants alike have their hands out, and sometimes even in the till.

In all, some 45 million Americans are now on food stamps — a record high. And more Americans went on “disability” over the past three months (246,000) than actually found jobs (225,000).

It’s vicious cycle: The bad economy leads to job losses and reduced income; lower or nonexistent incomes force more people to take advantage of the safety net; government spending on “entitlements” rises to meet the demand; deficits widen; borrowing soars; the economy worsens — and ’round we go again.

Yet President Obama and the Democrats soldier blithely on, proposing $3 trillion budgets, running up massive deficits and pushing the national debt — now almost $16 trillion — into the ionosphere.

And, for the most part, the Republicans go right along with them.

Why? For votes. It’s just that simple.

Since Tammany Hall ruled New York City from its Wigwam on 14th Street, this electoral calculus has been based on favors received and favors returned. The old pols worked the streets, offering patronage jobs and other kinds of benefits in exchange for votes, and it paid off big: The Democrats in particular were able to assemble and maintain a huge coalition of philosophically antithetical groups (blacks, Jews, union workers, single women).

But when the Party of Take becomes bigger than the Party of Give — then what?

A record 46 million people are now living below the poverty line, currently defined as an income of $22,314 for a family of four. And half the population pays little or nothing in federal taxes, whereas the top 10 percent now pays fully 70 percent of income levies — and Obama wants them to pay even more.

The party can’t go on forever. But the entitlement mentality — that’s another thing. Half of all Americans now live in a household that gets a government check.

And that includes, in Iowa, those serving jail time.

Michael Walsh’s new book, “The People v. the Democratic Party,” is out this month.